Read Linda McMahon’s Full January 2009 ‘Background Information Questionnaire’

The Hartford Courant, which today ably dissected the fudges and misstatements in a government disclosure form that Linda McMahon submitted more than a year ago when she was nominated by Governor Jodi Rell for a seat on the Connecticut Board of Education, now has posted the complete document itself. See http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-mcmahon-questionnaire-pdf-html,0,465045.htmlstory.

McMahon, who went on later in the year to embark on a run for the U.S. Senate, filed this form on January 9, 2009 — exactly one week after Congressman Henry Waxman handed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigation of World Wrestling Entertainment drug policies over to the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, which proceeded to do nothing. Several months later WWE’s outside law firm, K&L Gates, de-registered as the company’s Washington lobbyist.

Included in Linda McMahon’s Connecticut disclosure filing is a letter from K&L Gates’ Jerry McDevitt explaining the federal indictment of WWE’s predecessor company, TitanSports, and her husband Vince McMahon, on steroid trafficking charges, as well as their acquittal at a 1994 trial.

McDevitt’s account is substantially accurate; I happen to agree that the government may have overreached in attempting to criminalize these aspects of Vince McMahon’s actions, and certainly failed the burden of proving a criminal conspiracy.

For the edification of those readers of this blog who are hearing for the first time about the McMahons’ mid-nineties brush with the feds, I note one omission in the McDevitt attachment: it says nothing about the mysterious role of defense attorney Laura Brevetti’s husband, Martin Bergman, and his irregular contacts with government witness Emily Feinberg, Vince McMahon’s former secretary.

The background on all that is in “Linda McMahon’s Husband Vince Fought the Law, And the Law Lost (Part 4 — The Defense Lawyer, The ‘Fixer,’ And the Playboy Model”), December 24, 2009, http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/linda-mcmahon%E2%80%99s-husband-vince-fought-the-law-and-the-law-lost-part-4-%E2%80%93-the-defense-lawyer-the-%E2%80%98fixer%E2%80%99-and-the-playboy-model/.

Irv Muchnick